Characteristics of vertical land movement and microearthquake activity in the northeastern Japan arc

Methods have been devised for analyzing vertical land movement and seismicity data using two-dimensional Chebychev functions and oblique projections. A filtering operation in the space domain is made possible by use of a two-dimensional Chebychev function. The oblique projections give an intuitive understanding of land deformation. Characteristic aspects of vertical land movement obtained by precise levelling and of the energy release of microearthquakes with depths shallower than 20 km in the northeastern Japan arc were investigated in detail applying these methods.Lineations with wavelength of about 20–60km trending towards NE—SW were found for both the land deformation and the seismicity. It should be noted that this trend is almost perpendicular to the direction of the strain migration and is related to other geophysical information.